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Kristen and I are quite excited about the launch of Office 2010 (I think we need to get out more!). We have gathered some resources from our colleague Ray Fleming who writes the UK Schools Blog ; he and his team have been busy creating some entertaining videos with suggestions of how they think features...

I am always amazed at the various professional networks that teachers belong to. When I was teaching, my professional network revolved mainly around the teachers I met on local authority organised training (these don’t happen to the same extent any more ) and a professional subject network, such as the...

Over the past year, the work we have undertaken with teachers and schools has resulted in us creating and collecting a plethora of video resources. We wanted to make sure that we are able share these with as many of you as possible. So we have created our very own YouTube Channel. The UK Partners in...

We’ve just issued the third edition of our accessibility guide for teachers, and it’s available as a download from our accessibility site . The site also includes a number of accessibility video case studies . The Accessibility: A Guide for Educators has been updated to include information on Windows...

A while ago I blogged about PowerPoint and highlighted some of the great resources that are available, such as Plex for PowerPoint for example. That gives teachers and students absolutely no excuse to create boring and dull presentations and not to avoid the ‘death by PowerPoint’ scenario.
Here is...

Do you believe in the idea that our futures and personalities are governed by Zodiac star signs. Here is an example, which one of these do you think describes myself and Kristen, are you able to identify our personality traits from just our blog posts? (or even from the occasions where you may have met...

Production is running high in creating your videos for the Innovid Competition and with 3 weeks left before the closing date, many of you are ready to begin recording your ideas. So we have had a lot of questions, one in particular has been ‘Can we use Office 2010 in our videos? ’. Not surprisingly,...

Alessio Bernardelli teaches in Croesyceiliog School in Cwmbran, Wales, in this blog post he describes his journey with the Innovative Teachers Network programme, how it has transformed his teaching and his views on education as he has developed his own professional learning network.
These are his...

My previous post described how you can use AutoCollage , t o tell digital stories in the classroom, here is a great example from one of our award winning teachers, David Rogers, whose students have used this free application to make a comparison of their local area.
Microsoft has a number of free...

In my last post I described a simple walkthrough of AutoCollage and how to create a photo collage. Now lets look at some ways of how you can use AutoCollage to allow your pupils and students to describe and communicate their thinking and ideas through images. One obvious use is to create collages from...

There are two main keyword phrases that people use to find this blog from a web search. These are Autocollage and the Deep Zoom Composer Workshops . So when I was asked at a recent Innovative Teachers workshop, Did I have any guides about Autocollage?, writing an AutoCollage Workshop seemed to be a good...

One of my new Year’s resolution is to get fit again; I suspect many of you have a similar resolution. Well, it's not going to be workout videos for me. No, I’m going to endure the annual marathon that is the 2010 BETT show. If last year's event is anything to go by, I should lose loads of weight, or...

During this Summer, we held a unique event for us, the first Innovative Teachers Summer Camp , where we invited 10 of our innovative teachers to develop some classroom resources. Their task was to begin creating short, 3-5 minute videos, to support teachers and educators in the use of technology in the...

We have talked a lot about Dan Roberts, one of our award winners from the Worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum in Hong Kong. He is still very much an active member of the Innovative Teachers programme, and Kristen and I are in contact with him and his school on a regular basis. He has just returned from...

This is how Wordle sees this blog if we use it to analyse the content we've written over the past word. We are really pleased to see that we are clearly focussing on teachers, but also, we are really pleased to see the prominence of teaching and learning, resources, community and the word innovative...

Whilst working for Microsoft, I have had some great opportunities. One of the things that has had the biggest impact has been the people I have met. I am convinced that it would have been very unlikely that I would have met or even heard about such people when I was in the classroom. This thought is...

Anybody that has taught knows that certain well-known myths are just not true. For example, there is dinosaur living in a lake in Scotland (actually, I believe this one is true), woman are worse drivers than men and teachers do not work in August. Today I can dispel at least one of these myths: teachers...

I have had a number of requests of how to make the the Deep Zoom mosaics I featured in my first workshop post . It's a question I have been asked before, so I have undertaken a little research and this is what I have discovered. Using the information in this post you could easily create these Deep Zoom...

In my previous post I described how I see D eep zoom as a resource for the classroom, rather than just as image design tool for web sites. In this post, I am going to explore how easy it is to create your own Deep Zooms and use them as a medium for visual story telling.
To take part in this workshop...

I leave Kristen alone for 5 minutes and she has had a blogging frenzy,now I need to catch up after my summer break. This is the first of a series of posts in what I hope will be an informative and constructive workshop, that you would be able to recreate with student and colleagues. As well learn how...

Did you know that 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy? It’s also 40 years since man first stepped on the Moon. Because of this, in my recent school visits I’ve seen a lot of teachers undertaking projects based around Earth and space. (Incidentally, as a child of the 1960's, I feel really old...

To collect another award of course…..
Regular readers of our blog will know all about the Chickenman , aka Dan Roberts . He is one of our most proactive Innovative Teachers and award winners. But he's not just all feathers and eggs; his work is highly motivating for his students bringing Dan a number...

Planning is probably the most disliked word in the teaching profession (apart from inspection , that is). From my experience it dominates your time as a teacher. You have a variety of planning to undertake: lesson, weekly, short, medium, long and individual, to name just a few. You have endless planning...

Many secondary schools I visit are busy creating comprehensive libraries of content to support their students' learning. This content is often shared across a learning platform of some kind. It’s not really my field of expertise, being a primary school teacher, so I admit that am not fully aware of the...

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Sam, aged 7 , Is a PC! Microsoft has some great adverts running at the moment, where kids show how easy it is to use a PC. Take a look at this one, on the right, in...